


where dreams go to die

by popnographic



Category: What Remains of Edith Finch (Video Game)
Genre: Family Reunions, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 23:23:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15873822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/popnographic/pseuds/popnographic
Summary: Edith goes back to the house she grew up in to get answers to questions she's had all her life. She doesn't know at all what to expect she'll find there, but she definitely doesn't expect to find someoneelseon a search for answers.





	where dreams go to die

**Author's Note:**

> I recently played through "The Unfinished Swan" and "What Remains of Edith Finch". What can I say, those two games are absolutely amazing- especially the latter. One character's story really stuck with me, and so I knew I had to write this to get it out of my system. If you haven't played "What Remains of Edith Finch", please do. You won't regret it.

If Dawn saw her right now, she’d be furious, and probably scared, too. She would wonder why, _why_ Edith would go back to the place where everything, and everyone, went to die. But unlike many times during her childhood, now Edith actually has an answer to that unasked question. She has an answer she thinks is worth the risk of returning to the house where she grew up, which is also the house where many of her family members never got the chance to grow up.

For as long as the Finches have lived in that house, Edith’s great-grandmother Edie had crafted memorials for every family member that lost their lives. In their bedrooms, where they’d died if they had passed away around the house (which most of them had)… in the most morbid ways, Edie had made sure they were always surrounded by death, and that they were always reminded of the people that had once been in their lives, but no longer were.

Edith had learnt the concept of death at an age many would say is way too early. Now that Edith is older, she’s not sure she would agree. She doesn’t want to know what she would’ve done with herself had she not known the reason why Dawn was always so paranoid, why there were memorials scattered around the house, why so many areas of the house were sealed off. Why there was a house that had mostly sunk into the sea behind the house, even. Now, Edith knows. And all of her questions can be answered with the same one word.

Death.

Are the Finches really cursed, or are they just the unluckiest family in the world? Edith doesn’t know what to think. She doesn’t want to blame a curse, but sometimes it seems like the only logical explanation if she is to believe the stories she’s been told of how her family members have died. Because some of them truly do seem too bizarre to be true.

Edith walks along the forest path leading to her old house. It’s autumn, and it’s very obvious. It’s very pretty, though. The leaves around her are yellow, red, and orange, and most of them are scattered around on the ground she walks on, making it look a lot more cheerful than it is to return to the old Finch residence that has been left untouched for so many years.

Why is she doing it if she isn’t all too happy about being back? Because Edith needs answers, and she feels like now is the right time to _get_ answers to the questions that have multiplied steadily since she was a young child. If not now, when? If she doesn’t find out the answers to her questions herself, who will? Edith is the last Finch left alive, so she’s the only one who can find out all of these things. Because, really, no one else would be able to believe what they’d find out.

Armed with one key, Edith makes her way into the house. Not the way she’d expected, no—the key didn’t lead to the main entrance. Despite her growing belly of twenty-two weeks, Edith manages to squeeze herself into the house through the cat door. When she’s made it inside, and she’s standing in the hallway of the house she once called home, Edith lets out a sigh. She doesn’t know if it’s a sigh of relief or not, but maybe she’ll find out.

Apart from the dust that has gathered since the night they left, everything is left exactly as it was then. It’s strange, because Edie was still in the house when Edith and Dawn left. Edith knows Edie died at some point after they left, but she doesn’t know when or how. It’s one of the deaths Edith figures she’ll never know the reason or time for, unlike everyone else in her family up until Odin who was the one who brought them here from Norway to begin with.

Slowly but surely, Edith begins her way through the house. She reads Molly’s last diary entry and is taken on a disturbingly vivid journey told from a ten-year olds perspective that ultimately led to her poisoned death. It both amazes and horrifies Edith just how detailed the writing is—Molly was, after all, only ten when she had died. Her tale going from how she’d seen a bird outside her window and becoming a cat, going to her becoming a sea monster that would ultimately end up lurking under Molly’s bed, is a story that Edith probably won’t forget anytime soon.

Shuddering as she closes the book, Edith can’t help but feel a slight tinge of sadness in her chest. From what she’s seen of Molly, judging by her bedroom, the photos, and not to mention her diary, Edith feels like she would’ve really liked her great-aunt. Of course, people change as they grow, and Molly might not have had the same kind of imagination as she got older, but it’s still a shame. Molly, as many other Finches, had died way too young.

Moving forward, and deeper into the house, Edith finds a comic book retelling the night when Molly’s sister Barbara had died. Quickly, Edith concludes that at least the comic book’s contents are something she can dismiss as pure lies and fiction, because there’s no way this happened and there aren’t news articles around the house confirming the inexplicable events of that night. If there’s news articles of Edith’s father’s death, why none of Barbara if she had been so famous?

Great-uncle Calvin dies after having gotten himself thrown off a swing—something Edith finds out by reading a letter that Calvin’s twin brother Sam had written and left behind in Calvin’s side of their shared bedroom. Edith’s uncle Gus dies in a storm after getting hit by debris. Her other uncle Gregory dies only a year old as a result of neglect, drowning in the bath tub.

Having read the divorce papers that revealed how Gregory died, Edith decides it’s time to leave that part of the house behind. She gets out, and stands around the back of the house for a few minutes, to get some fresh air, and to gather herself before she continues towards the last few members of her family and their stories that ended too soon.

Edith can’t get Gregory out of her mind. Thinking of her own child growing in her belly right now, Edith doesn’t dare to think of the risks she’s taking in bringing a child into the world. Especially with a cursed last name such as the one she still bears. Should she really have gone forward with this? Wouldn’t it just be better if the curse ended with her, and that it doesn’t spread any further? Thirteen members of her family have died, and none of them died of old age. Something is clearly haunting them, and Edith wonders if she’s just asking for trouble by continuing her pregnancy, by having decided that yes, she wants a baby.

Finally, Edith goes inside Milton’s tower. There are paintings everywhere, and strangely enough, there are even yellow footprints all over the floor along with the other paint. They really stand out, and in more ways than one, but Edith knows she won’t figure anything out unless she keeps looking around. Eventually, she finds a little flipbook titled “ _Milton Finch in ‘The Magic Paintbrush’_ ”. It tells a story using only pictures of how Milton paints himself a way out of the tower that was his bedroom, his workspace—but it still doesn’t tell Edith what on earth happened to her brother. Why and how did he go missing, and what’s with this book of him indicating he left on his own?

Nothing else in Milton’s tower helps Edith figure out what happened the day Milton disappeared. His room was always a mess, and there was always paint everywhere just like it is right now. Maybe it never looked like _this_ , but Edith has definitely seen variations of it to not be _too_ confused by the sight. Maybe it doesn’t confuse her, but it does frustrate her since it still leaves her with as much information as she had before walking inside.

Walking back out again, Edith starts making her way back into the main house. She’d come here in hopes of finally getting her questions answered, but in most cases, she feels like she’s left with more questions than she had before. Maybe that’s what Edie wanted, since she most definitely wanted Edith to return one day to find things out on her own.

The sound of something snapping brings Edith out of her thoughts. She quickly turns around, and tries to identify where the sound had come from. It’s already getting dark, so that definitely isn’t helping her right now. What’s she thinking, being out here all by herself at this time of day? Isn’t she just _contributing_ to the family curse like this, by being reckless?

“Who’s there?” she dares ask, though her trembling voice would argue she barely _does_ dare. Edith hears the rustling of leaves, and watches a silhouette emerge from behind her older brother Milton’s tower. A taller figure slowly approaches her, and when their features are slowly defined in the remaining light of the day, Edith’s eyes widen in shock and surprise.

It can’t be. Is it just wishful thinking? It’s been eleven years at this point, how would she know what her brother looks like now? And speaking _of_ Milton, hadn’t he gone missing all those years ago?

But so many of his features that grow more and more detailed the closer they get to each other, remind Edith of him. The eleven-year old Milton who was obsessed with painting to the point where you could see it just by looking at him. This man looks so different yet so… familiar. And that’s what makes Edith call out.

“… Milton?” Edith asks carefully. The man looks at her with an unreadable expression on his face for a few seconds, not saying a thing. Then, before Edith has the time to react, the man steps forward and takes her into his arms.

“Edith,” Milton exhales, and that’s all it takes for Edith to break down.

 

* * *

 

Now, all of the missing-posters all over the house almost make Edith laugh. He’s no longer missing, he’s right here. Edith now has far more questions than she had walking up to the house not that long ago, but these questions are different. These are questions she never thought she’d have, because Edith had at one point come to terms with the fact that there was no chance in hell Milton would be alive after all that time of having been gone.

But he is, and that’s why Edith is bursting at the seams full of questions for her older brother. Of course, she probably should’ve expected Milton to ask the most obvious question first. He doesn’t have to point for her to know, but he practically does, anyway.

“It’s been so long since I last saw you that you’re now old enough to have your own kids.”

Edith smiles, placing a hand on her little bump. “Yeah. It still feels a little weird.”

“Father of the baby still in the picture?”

“He is,” Edith confirms. “He was actually against me coming here, partly because… well, I’m pregnant, and getting around this house in this state is a little difficult. He also didn’t want me coming here because he feared I wouldn’t like what I’d find out.”

Milton hums. “I get that. I… I actually have a son of my own. Name’s Monroe, and he’s four.”

“Wow,” Edith says. “So… I have a nephew since four years.”

“And I’ll have a nephew or a niece in a few months,” Milton smiles. “Who would’ve thought this is what would happen to us, the last two Finches?”

Ever since Dawn died, Edith had thought _she_ was the only Finch left alive. Everyone else’s deaths had been confirmed, and while Milton’s never was, there came a point where Edith had just accepted the fact that she’d never see Milton again.

“How are you still alive?” she finally asks after a while, when it’s sunk in a bit better that she’s here with her brother again. Milton smiles sadly, shaking his head.

“I’m sorry I made you think I died, Edith. Mum said it was for the best.”

Edith blinks a few times in confusion, and she almost feels angry at this revelation. “Mum did? What are you talking about?”

Milton sighs. “It’s a long story. And if I tell you all of this, I guarantee you’ll no longer like great-grandmother Edie, if you ever have.”

“Now you’re just multiplying the questions I have. Just tell me. I’m tired of these secrets; that’s why I came here in the first place. And don’t think I haven’t forgotten that I have to ask you why _you’re_ here.”

She realises she sounds a little more harsh than she wanted to, but Edith doesn’t take it back. If she’s correct in her assumptions made on the vague things Milton has told her so far, she’s been tricked to believe her brother was missing for many years, when in reality Dawn had known all along that Milton was alive. There was no point in searching for him. There was no point in sealing off his bedroom like Dawn had done with the others. Milton was never dead, barely even missing. And all this time, Edith was made to believe a lie about her own brother.

“Mum wanted to save me. She believed in the curse that Edie always went on about, and figured it was for the best if I left while I still could. Obviously, she had other plans for you, as she took you away from the house at the end.”

Still in disbelief, Edith barely knows what to say, but she forces her mind to cooperate with her mouth. “Yeah, but that wasn’t until _years_ after you left. And what was with that flipbook?”

“I had to make Edie think I’d actually disappeared… in the only way that would be credible to her. Through fiction.”

“So she didn’t know?”

Milton raises his eyebrows slightly, and Edith senses a bit of contempt in Milton’s expressions and body language. It’s strange to see all of this, all of _Milton_ —Edith hasn’t seen him in fourteen entire years, after all, so she hasn’t seen him grow up and become the man he is today. “I don’t even want to imagine what she would’ve created around the house if she knew I hadn’t actually disappeared.”

What Milton has started talking about makes Edith really worry about what she’ll find out about Edie that’ll make her dislike their great-grandmother. Truth to be told, Edith never knew what exactly to think of her great-grandmother growing up. Sometimes, Edith adored Edie, admired her. Sometimes, Edith was almost scared of the older woman. And sometimes… Edie was just Edie. And whatever that means, Edith couldn’t ever begin to explain. There were several reasons why Dawn wanted them to leave the house, and Edith knows that at least one of those reasons mirror her own reasons for sometimes finding Edie frightening.

“Honestly, I _wanted_ my disappearance to be some kind of magical trick. That I’d just go up in smoke, get away from everything. I never believed in Edie’s stories of how we were a cursed family, but I _do_ believe she made it real, somehow.”

Edith lowers her eyebrows, confused. They’re sitting in her old bedroom on top of the covers that have been there ever since the night she and Dawn left. It hits Edith that this is the first time since then that she’s back, and it’ll probably also be the last. Following tonight, there won’t be a reason to come back.

“I do want to know why you despise Edie so much, and the story behind it all, but I first want to know… what _happened_ to you? Where have you been all this time?”

Milton gives her a look that Edith can see both sadness and frustration in. He’s an adult now, way different than the last time they saw each other when Edith was seven, but Edith still senses the old Milton in there. It’s odd seeing him this grown up, this mature, but Edith hopes that maybe now they can stay in touch and slowly begin to fill the fourteen year big gap between them over time. Milton came back here for a reason, and Edith hopes that said reason also means it’s safe enough for him to stick around now.

The only clue Edith has as to why Milton could have been made to leave by Dawn is actually what Edith had overheard Dawn shouting at Edie the night before they left: ‘ _My children are dead because of your stories_.’

Is this why Dawn sent Milton away from the Finch house? Because she was scared the ‘curse’ would get him killed like everyone else? Why didn’t she just take Milton with them and leave sooner? Why send Milton off on his own?

“Mum sent me to live with two close friends of hers; a couple who had a son I got close to as we grew up together. Life with them was… completely different from what things were like here. There wasn’t a single room in the house I wasn’t allowed inside. There were no big family secrets, no webs of lies that had been passed down generations. I was able to live a normal life, away from the Finches. I’d always be a Finch on paper and in my heart, but Mum hoped I at least wouldn’t be a Finch in the sense that death would find me too soon like it did almost everyone else.”

“Why didn’t we get to go with you?” Edith asks, still full of questions even though she’s finally started to get some answers. “Why would she split us up?”

Milton rolls his eyes. “She thought we’d be safer that way. She couldn’t keep you and me both safe at the same time, so I had to go. As the eldest son.”

Lewis comes to mind, as he’d once been the eldest son before passing away and giving the role away to Milton, and Edith is once again reminded of the pain she went through after Lewis had killed himself. It wasn’t that long after his passing that Milton ‘disappeared’, and now that she knows why he’d disappeared and where he’s been, it all makes sense to Edith. What killed Lewis wasn’t just bad luck. It wasn’t an accident. Lewis had gotten so tired of his mundane life that his daydreams took over, and made him want to live inside of them.

In the end, that’s what he had done, and that’s also what would be the cause of his death.

“Don’t misunderstand Mum; it wasn’t that she valued one of us over the other. She loved us both equally, and that’s why we couldn’t be together. Things had been different if Dad were still around, but… you know.”

Sometimes, all Edith wants to do is to laugh at her family’s miserable situation that’s been haunting them for decades. Even her poor father managed to marry himself into the mess that seemingly cursed the Finches. Edith realises that Dawn must’ve felt responsible for Sanjay’s death, since she was the one who brought him into the family. To Dawn, it must’ve felt as if she threw him to the wolves. In this case, though, the wolves are a curse weighing heavily on the Finch name.

“Yeah, I know,” Edith sighs. “If only things had been different.”

“They could’ve been. If only Edie hadn’t been so damn obsessed with the idea of us being cursed.”

There it is again. Up until now, Milton has only alluded to what he thinks of Edie, and the full story of his so-called disappearance brought on by supposedly Edie, and also Dawn who wanted to protect her children more than anything else.

“Milton… what is it about Edie? What did she do?”

“This,” Milton says, gesturing around the room they’re in. “She made us all believe in a curse that was never real. There’s no such things as curses; most of us Finches are just really reckless and idiotic. It wasn’t a curse that only left the two of us alive.”

In most cases, now that Edith knows more of what truly happened to her family, she has to agree with her brother. Odin died because he was reckless, sailing off with a house across the sea in bad weather. Molly, Gregory, Calvin, and Gus died of neglect in various ways. Sam and Walter weren’t careful enough. Lewis died because reality wasn’t kind enough to him. Dawn died not because of a curse, but because of a natural, brutal, illness. No one knows what became of Edie, but considering her age, not to mention her habits of mixing medicine with alcohol, Edith can only make a guess.

No, it isn’t a curse. The Finches are just unlucky, or incredibly foolish.

 

* * *

 

It feels as if she’s just had her bubble burst, and that Milton was the one holding the needle. But, as rude of an awakening as it is, Edith is glad. She’s hated living in ignorance for so long, having been forced to do so since no one would tell her the truth. So now that Milton has given her a new perspective on things, taken off her rose-tinted glasses, Edith can’t be anything but relieved.

“… I always did find these memorials everywhere tactless,” Edith mutters. “I can’t believe Edie made Mum _sleep_ next to one of those for so long.”

Milton narrows his eyes, looking out the window at the darkening sky. “Tell me about it. I think I realised early on how screwed up this entire family was, and it only made it easier on me when Mum said I had to leave.”

“But what about us? Were you okay with not being able to see us again?”

“Of course not,” Milton says quickly. “It took me years to finally be okay with it. But I kept telling myself that this was for the best, for all of us. And then Mum took you away from the house, finally, which made it easier to live with.”

“You kept in touch.”

 “A few letters here and there. Just so I could know the very gist of what happened.”

Edith raises an eyebrow. “I thought she sent you away so you wouldn’t have to find out.”

“Well, no, it was to keep me safe. You’re still family, and I want to know what’s happening to you.”

Edith can’t blame him, she knows she’d think the exact same thing. There’s nothing that could completely keep her away from her family. If she had to physically be away from them, then at least she’d want the emotional bond to be there, still. Would that be selfish, if she had been the one to leave?

She just wishes they could’ve still kept in touch even if Milton wasn’t there with them. The fact that Dawn came up with the idea of faking her son’s kidnapping shows Edith that Edie really did have too big, and bad, of an influence on all of them—not just Dawn. Until she reunited with Milton, Edith has been under the false belief that they were cursed. That all of these deaths occurred because they were cursed. She should’ve known it herself: there’s no such things as curses. There’s bad luck, there’s foolishness, and there’s nature playing a part in it sometimes, too.

“What are you going to do now?”

She knows it’s an incredibly open question, but Edith doesn’t want to rephrase it. In return, however, she can’t help but hope Milton’s answer won’t be as open and vague.

“I’m going to leave this house behind for good, and I hope you will, too. And then we’ll be the siblings we once were. I’ll do a better job of being your big brother.”

Edith smiles, leaning her head on Milton’s shoulder. “I look forward to that. What are we going to do about the house, though?”

“What about it?”

“Mum left it to me in her will. In retrospect, I don’t know why she didn’t will it off to the both of us, since she knew you’re still alive.”

Milton shrugs. “She knew I didn’t want it. Mum didn’t even know I planned on going back one last time, but it wasn’t as if I would’ve told her that, anyway. I guess… it’s up to you what you want to do with it, Edith.”

Even if it _hadn’t_ been the infamous Finch house, it would be a house far too big for three people to live in, where one of them is a baby. Edith has absolutely no use for the house now other than to use it as Edie worked for so many years on presenting it as: a giant memorial. A museum of death, almost. A place where you can go and remind yourself of how each and every single Finch died, _when_ they’d lived and died, and how they’d lived until their very last moment.

Maybe the new Finch house should go down like the other did. Maybe Edith should just let it stay there up on the cliff until the tide one day washes it away, or buries it beneath the waves.

“One thing’s for sure,” she says. “I’m not coming back. And I’m not letting anyone else in my family come here.”

“Wise decision. We can always tell our families these stories ourselves… the way they’re _meant_ to be told.”

Edith smiles. “Yeah.”

 

* * *

 

Months later, Christopher is born. Edith gets to see her son, and hold him, but the biggest and happiest moment of her life doesn’t last long. It’s already been decided where Christopher will end up after this, and it’s a decision Edith dies happy with.

Christopher Finch goes against his mother’s and uncle’s wish, but only once. When he is thirteen, he returns to the Finch house, steering his footsteps towards the graveyard. The last time someone was here was a few years ago, when Milton had set up Edith’s tombstone in the family graveyard. Now, Christopher visits the Finch house for the first time in his life, only to place flowers on his mother’s grave, and to never return.

He knows it’s for the best that way.

**Author's Note:**

> [ [tumblr](http://radiodread.tumblr.com) | [twitter](http://twitter.com/idiotmatsu) ]


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